


the boy needs sunlight

by addandsubtract



Category: iKON (Korea Band)
Genre: Body Horror, M/M, Pre-Slash, Sea Monsters, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2020-06-25 15:31:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19748590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addandsubtract/pseuds/addandsubtract
Summary: Hanbin has to pull his gaze away from the sea.





	the boy needs sunlight

**Author's Note:**

> set after mix and match, pre-debut. warnings for grossness related to monster transformation, and also not the happiest ending in the world.

i.

“Hanbin?” Junhoe’s voice is a little tentative. Hanbin has to pull his gaze away from the sea – Bobby on Yunhyung’s shoulders in the water, fighting off Jinhwan and Donghyuk, Chanwoo hanging back behind them, chest deep. Junhoe is sitting next to him on the sun-warmed sand, and when Hanbin turns, Junhoe touches underneath his nose with two fingers. His eyebrows are raised. He looks faintly embarrassed, like he hadn’t wanted to point it out.

Hanbin mirrors the motion and finds wetness. His fingers are red when he pulls them back, smeared with blood. He’s not sure when his nose started bleeding.

“Are you okay?” Junhoe asks, caught between worried and reluctant.

Hanbin doesn’t really know. “I’m fine,” he says, voice too harsh, curt like it’s been cut out of his chest. He wipes his fingers off on his shorts and tilts his head back.

ii.

The first night, they make a bonfire on the beach, five minutes walk from the bungalow the managers rented for them. Team building exercise, something – some excuse after the way the last six months have been. They eat out of little plastic containers and dig their toes into the sand and Hanbin wonders if it’s really true that they’re not being filmed. Four days in seclusion is almost more than he knows what to do with.

He takes off his flip-flops and wanders down to the water. He lets the waves lap up over his toes, the tops of his feet, his ankles. It’s cold enough to startle goosebumps onto his arms, but not unpleasant. He shivers, takes two steps further in, then three, four. Until he’s standing knee-deep in the water, looking at the moon against the clouds, listening to Yunhyung’s raucous laughter, Bobby yelling. He pushes his snapback further down on his forehead. He doesn’t mind the quiet.

He doesn’t realize anything is wrong until the stinging starts – a line of fire licking his ankle and up over his kneecap. There’s a tightening, something coiled around his leg, and he’s pulled off balance, ass-first into the sea with a loud splash. Water sloshes into his mouth, and he coughs. It hurts, whatever it is, and it’s creeping up past his knee, wrapping around his thigh, pushing underneath the hem of his shorts. He gets his hands under the water, trying to pry it off, but it stings his palms, and it’s slippery, almost gelatinous. He can’t get a good grip, and it _hurts_.

He feels a rubbery tip press against his other ankle, pricking like a thousand tiny needles. He tries to dig in with his fingernails, but all it does is give and slide, and he can’t pry it off. It wriggles against his palms, his knee and his inner thigh and the side of his calf. He doesn’t know what it wants. The water breaks against him, pushing him back against the sandy bottom, brine splashing against his chest and into his mouth. He can feel the way his chest tightens, the way he’s starting to panic.

He must make a noise, because Jinhwan’s there, wrapping a hand around his bicep and hauling him up. There’s a moment of resistance, and then the thing, the arm, the tentacle, whatever it is, releases him. Jinhwan wraps an arm around Hanbin’s waist.

“What happened?” he asks. Hanbin hobbles out of the water, letting Jinhwan support some of his weight.

“I don’t really know,” he says. Was he attacked? He doesn’t know.

When he sits down by the fire Bobby is there, sucking a noise past his teeth. They’re all staring at him, wide-eyed. Hanbin looks down at himself, the way the palms of his hands are throbbing, the line of red welts that curves around his leg and up underneath the dripping fabric of his shorts. The way he’s trembling all over.

“You really know how to bring down the mood,” Bobby says, because he’s Bobby. Junhoe’s mouth twists, and Yunhyung whacks Bobby on the back of the head.

“Maybe it was some kind of jellyfish,” Hanbin says. He doesn’t really think so, but maybe.

“You’re okay, though?” Donghyuk’s glasses have slid down to the end of his nose, and it makes him look very young. 

Hanbin nods. “I’m sure I’m fine,” he says. “Just don’t go in the water when it’s dark.”

Jinhwan presses his fingers just next to a welt, and the heat makes Hanbin wince. “We should take you to a doctor,” he says.

“Nah.” Hanbin shakes his head. “Just help me back to the room, I think I have some aloe.”

“If you’re sure,” Jinhwan says, and Hanbin looks around the circle of worried faces and doesn’t want to ruin anything.

“I’m sure,” he says.

iv.

In the morning, the welts have faded to a dark brown, scar tissue thick, and they don’t hurt, though they do itch. He shows one of the managers, just to be safe, but it doesn’t seem much to worry about.

And then, down on the beach after breakfast, his nose starts bleeding. His mouth tastes like copper, but there isn’t much to do about it. Junhoe keeps sneaking glances his way, half annoyed and half worried.

“Volleyball?” Bobby asks, wading out of the water, and trots off to Chanwoo, who is marking out the court. Hanbin stands, brushing sand off of his shorts. 

He holds out a hand to Junhoe. Junhoe scowls, but lets Hanbin help him up. His eyes flicker down Hanbin’s face again, and Hanbin wipes at his noise, flakes of red-brown coming off on the backs of his knuckles. 

iv.

Back at the beginning, when it was just the three of them, Bobby and Jinhwan used to climb in bed with him sometimes, crowding in on either side, pushing him down into the mattress. He doesn’t know how they knew when, but he thinks it was probably Jinhwan, waiting until Hanbin was too wound up, until he’d actually let them. He used to think, _I like this too much. I like this too much_ , over and over, but he never had it in him to push them away. Sometimes he thinks about Jinhwan’s pointy chin in the hollow of his collarbone, Bobby breathing humid air into his ear. The way Bobby would sometimes touch the skin of his stomach underneath his shirt, where he was warm. Once Junhoe joined they stopped doing it as much. Hanbin misses it sometimes.

v. 

Hanbin doesn’t know what to do with free time – he can’t remember the last time he really had any – so he takes his notebook and sits in one of the chairs out behind the bungalow.

He can’t focus. He keeps thinking about the thing in the water, how it had pulled him under, how it had burned. He sketches in the margins, wondering what it was. What would have happened if Jinhwan hadn’t pulled him out.

His nose starts bleeding again while he’s not paying attention. A drop of blood hits the paper, and then another. He smears it with his finger, pushes his other hand against his nose. His fingers are trembling – he’s afraid. When Donghyuk calls from the doorway, he slams the notebook closed with too much force, takes a deep breath before he heads inside.

vi.

He has trouble sleeping that night. He feels hot – restless. Like his skin is too tight, tugging at his joints and cheekbones and spine. He pushes the sheet off and stares at the ceiling. He wishes he could see the reflection of the moon off of the water, but the angle is wrong. He picks at the skin on his legs, scratches at it. Some of it flakes off underneath his fingernails, and then there’s a hand on his wrist.

Junhoe exhales deeply, almost put upon, and then climbs into bed with him. Hanbin is too surprised to do much. He realizes that he’s holding his breath when Junhoe squeezes his wrist again and it sighs out of him.

“What –” he starts, but Junhoe puts a hand over his mouth, thumb pushing against his jaw.

“Shh,” he says, and if it were light enough Hanbin is sure he’d see Junhoe rolling his eyes, grudging mouth a flat line. Bobby and Chanwoo are asleep on the other side of the room, the other three just next door, and Hanbin doesn’t know why Junhoe is here. He’s sweating, and his leg itches. The skin on his palms feels like it might just split open. He wants to dig his fingernails in and peel it off, just to make the itching stop. He doesn’t know what’s happening to him.

Junhoe’s hand slides off of his mouth and down around his throat. Hanbin can feel his pulse pounding against Junhoe’s fingers. When Hanbin swallows, his trachea pushes against Junhoe’s palm. He concentrates on breathing, on Junhoe’s thigh pressed against the side of his leg, the curve of Junhoe’s body like a comma on the mattress next to him.

“We’re not stupid, you know,” Junhoe whispers, almost too quiet to hear. “We know something is wrong.”

Junhoe shifts, putting more of his weight on Hanbin’s chest and stomach, sliding his leg between Hanbin’s. He’s younger than Hanbin, but bigger, too. Hanbin feels held down, like if he struggled Junhoe could handle him.

“Junhoe –” he tries again, and Junhoe’s hand tightens on his neck. He swallows. Junhoe has his face buried in the mattress next to Hanbin’s head like he can’t look.

“I saw Jinhwan and Bobby do this, once,” he says, the quiet of his voice muffled against the sheets. “You were so hard on us in practice, and I thought – I thought, he must hate us. But you didn’t.”

Hanbin doesn’t remember it specifically, but it sounds like him. He remembers that feeling of tightness in his chest, where he wanted to lash out and have someone push back, someone push _him_ back. This isn’t the same urge, this desire to pull off his skin and see what’s underneath, but maybe it’s close enough.

vii.

The sky clouds over the next morning, and Hanbin spends an extra fifteen minutes in the shower watching blood mix in the water and swirl, pinkish, down the drain. He rubs at his leg with the palms of his hands, trying not to scratch, but it itches like hellfire, flakey and red-brown. Bits of it dislodge underneath his fingernails and stick there. He should say something but he isn’t sure how. He presses his forehead against the tile wall and he thinks, _I should tell them_ , but he knows he isn’t going to.

When he gets out, Yunhyung and Chanwoo are in the kitchen, standing over several piles of raw meat. Hanbin’s stomach rumbles. The blood and fat glisten in the fluorescent lighting. Hanbin can smell the heat from the hob, the oil crackling as it warms in the pan – it’s as if every sense is heightened. The meat sizzles as Yunhyung drops it in, and the smell of cooking beef makes Hanbin gag. He’s ravenously hungry but that _smell_ – he barely makes it back into the bathroom before he’s dry-heaving into the toilet.

Bobby finds him there some time later, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the bathroom, and puts a hand on the back of his neck. Bobby’s skin feels cool against his.

“Hanbin,” Bobby says. “You’re missing breakfast.” He doesn’t ask if Hanbin is okay, because he’s Bobby, and he knows. He doesn’t ask what’s going on, because he knows Hanbin won’t tell him. They’ve been friends for long enough that Hanbin can tell, that Hanbin understands the way Bobby knows him. That doesn’t help how Hanbin feels like an alien in his own skin, like he’s turning into something unrecognizable. He thinks about cooking meat, and nearly gags again.

“Give me a minute,” he says. “I’ll be right out.” He looks up at Bobby, beanie pulled firmly over his ears, and feels a pulse of affection. He adds, “I’m fine.”

Bobby’s mouth twists, but he shrugs, rubs his fingers over the nape of Hanbin’s neck, and then leaves him be.

viii.

Later, Hanbin takes the leftover plate of uncooked meat out of the fridge, and into the back yard. He eats it with his fingers, sitting in one of the beach chairs. His palms itch, and the skin on his leg is still flaking off, a little a time, but he can’t bear to look at it. He runs his fingers though the excess blood on the plate, and then sticks them in his mouth. After a moment, he pulls the plate closer to his face so he can lick it off.

He can hear the members yelling from the beach. He puts the empty plate in the sink before leaving to join them.

ix.

“You look a little better,” Donghyuk says, eyes squinting critically. They’re walking down the beach, away from town. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah,” Hanbin says. His mouth still tastes a little like blood, and he wipes the back of his hand over his lips. His nose hasn’t bled in awhile. Not since the meat this morning. He’s still hungry, though.

He looks at the palms of his hands, the stripes where the scabbed skin has come off and left new, rubbery, pale behind. It feels sensitive when he touches it, so he tries not to.

“We were all worried,” Donghyuk says, smiling faintly. His hair ruffles in the faint breeze, and when Hanbin looks too closely at him he swears he can see the pulse beating in his neck. “Especially Jinhwan. He thought something was really wrong.”

Hanbin hums. He’s knows that there is something wrong, but he can’t put his finger on what. He feels different, even, than he did this morning. He scratches idly at his leg through the fabric of his pants. The sand pushes up between the spread of his toes, and he likes the sound of the sea. It’s soothing.

“Hey, Hanbin, it sure was weird, right? It looked like something pulled you under.”

Hanbin looks over at Donghyuk, whose expression is taut with concern, like he wants Hanbin to make light of the idea. So Hanbin does. It’s better than saying that he doesn’t know, that maybe something really had. “Did it? No, just slipped on a rock and slid into a jellyfish. Much less glamorous.”

Donghyuk laughs, and punches Hanbin on the arm. The contact feels like a flash going off.

x.

Jinhwan pulls him aside after dinner. Hanbin is queasy from watching them eat, the slick, sucking sounds and the smell of boiled eggs. Jinhwan is worried – it shows easily in the lines of his face, his furrowed eyebrows and bitten mouth. He makes Hanbin feel so young, sometimes, and troublesome. Right now, though, the part of Hanbin that is ashamed wants to push past him into the hallway. He resents being constantly questioned, even if he understands that they have reason for concern. He doesn’t know what feelings are his anymore.

“You know what I’m going to say,” Jinhwan says. “You’re not Junhoe or Donghyuk. You’ve never liked being coddled.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Hanbin says. He doesn’t mean to raise his voice. 

Jinhwan’s mouth pulls taut. “Why do you keep saying that? We know you’re not.” Jinhwan’s eyes shift from Hanbin’s face over his shoulder, and Hanbin turns toward the doorway. They’re all clustered in the living room, but Hanbin catches Yunhyung glancing over, and then Chanwoo. Bobby knows when to leave Hanbin and Jinhwan be, and he’s distracting Donghyuk with his phone, but no one in this house isn’t listening in.

“I can’t talk about this,” Hanbin says. His leg itches. He rubs his hands over his thighs, and his palms tingle with the sensitive nerves of new flesh. “There’s nothing you can do, so leave it be.”

Jinhwan recoils a little. “Hanbin, what’s happening to you?”

Hanbin shrugs, the motion jerky and uneven. “I don’t know,” he says. “It doesn’t matter.”

Jinhwan’s face softens. He’s so kind-hearted. He wraps a hand around Hanbin’s wrist, and tugs him further into the room. The soft conversation from the living room fades out, and Jinhwan pushes Hanbin down onto his bed and climbs in after, curling himself up around Hanbin’s back. Hanbin exhales, and it feels like he’s been holding his breath. Something about it seems final.

_I guess I’m not going to debut after all,_ Hanbin thinks, but props his head on Jinhwan’s shoulder and doesn’t mention it out loud.

xi.

He wakes in the night, gasping, hot all over. He feels like he can’t breathe, like his chest is too tight, like his skin is splitting open. He’s _burning_. He stumbles out of bed and to the bathroom, leaning on the wall for support. Sparks go off in his vision with every step. He turns the tap on cold, plugs the drain, shucks his clothes and then climbs inside, crouching at the bottom of the tub and clutching at his knees. He’s shivering and burning at the same time, and the water slowly crosses his feet, ankles, calves, and up. He’s pretty sure he’s hyperventilating, so he concentrates on breathing in, and out, and in, and out, and in.

When he can see again, and breathe, and think, he looks down. The noise that comes out of him is almost a moan. The skin is molting from the trail coiled over his leg, up around his knee and to his thigh. The new flesh beneath is white like porcelain, and almost gelatinous to the touch, like an octopus. Like calamari. It glistens in the dim – the only light is from the nightlight Yunhyung plugged in when they arrived.

Even worse are the veins of black _something_ that spread out from the coil like an infection – around his thigh and across his kneecap, a few spindly tendrils arching over his foot. 

The beds of his fingernails are black, and when he looks at his hands, his wrists, the veins spread from the slices of white across his palms halfway up his forearms. He’s sure he wasn’t like this when he went to sleep.

Hanbin’s skin still feels hot and dry, as if he needs to be peeled like an onion. The cold water is the only thing that feels good. He spreads out, sinks as far under the water as he can. He’s trembling but he doesn’t know what else to do. He forces himself still, like if he doesn’t look, doesn’t think, nothing can hurt him. He listens to the water pouring from the tap.

He doesn’t know how long he stays like that before a hand wraps around his wrist and hauls him up. Junhoe looks wild eyed, hair in disarray, and he reaches over to turn off the faucet.

“I thought you’d drowned,” he says. “The running water woke me up. It’s flooded into the hallway.” He sounds stiff, the way he does when he really angry – not the show-anger, faux-annoyance, but real, actual anger.

Hanbin peers over the edge of the tub and sees Junhoe kneeling in water, the fabric of his pajama pants soaked with it. His bare feet look vulnerable. Something about them makes Hanbin hungry. 

Every bit of skin above the water feels like it’s on fire. Part of Hanbin wants to dig his nails in and just start tearing. He wonders if there’s more of that rubber underneath, more black pushing through his veins. He has to swallow twice before he can speak.

“Something’s wrong,” Hanbin says. It’s almost freeing to admit aloud, almost as freeing as it is terrifying. “I feel – something’s happening to me. What’s _happening_ to me?”

He holds out his hands for Junhoe to see, water dripping from his fingertips, his black nails. He wonders if they’re going to fall off. His chest hurts when he breathes in. He is so hungry.

Junhoe touches his hand, tentative, mouth drawn into a straight line.

“It wasn’t like this,” Hanbin says. “I would have –” He doesn’t know what to say.

“What really attacked you?” Junhoe asks, and he’s still holding onto Hanbin’s hand. The other presses against Hanbin’s forehead, overwarm, pushing his hair back. Hanbin wants to whimper – he can’t tell if he likes it or if it hurts. He thinks for a moment of tugging Junhoe forward and just biting into him – into his arm, maybe, or neck – and then he jolts back, out of Junhoe’s reach.

“I don’t know.”

“Let me go get Jinhwan –” Junhoe starts, and part of Hanbin wants to pull Junhoe into the bathtub with him and wait until he drowns or stills or maybe just lets Hanbin wrap him up and hold him tight and nibble at him. He’s so hungry. He doesn’t need much, just enough to fill him up a little.

“No, no, don’t,” Hanbin says. “Just – is there any meat left? In the fridge? Raw meat.”

Junhoe’s face stills, and he looks Hanbin over, the sweat on his face, the spreading infection, and maybe he realizes that he’s nothing any of them can do. Maybe he’s thinking something else entirely. Hanbin is just trying not to hurt him. “I think the managers brought some. Let me check.”

xii.

Hanbin shovels the chunks of raw beef into his mouth with his fingertips, still sitting naked in the water. It makes him feel a little better. Junhoe is perched on the edge of the tub, disgust warring with concern on his face. 

Hanbin thinks, idly, that he’s still peeling. There are bits of skin floating in the water. A fingernail. He wonders what he’ll look like when it’s over.

xiii.

It takes more than an hour, but Junhoe falls asleep next to the tub, curled up on the damp floor. Hanbin’s fingernails have mostly slid off of his fingers, leaving pale, mottled flesh behind, and the top layers of his skin have peeled away almost to his elbows. He leaves the plate at the bottom of the tub, and absently brushes Junhoe’s hair away from his face. He watches the heartbeat pulse in Junhoe’s neck, and he – knows what he has to do. The craving is still there, for all that it’s buried under the raw meat digesting inside him.

“Damn,” he says, scrubbing furiously at his cheeks, tears threatening. The skin on his face shifts like it’s too loose.

He creeps through the house, footprints leaving a trail on the floor, scratching at his peeling skin, brow furrowed as he look at the members sleeping faces – Bobby with his mouth open, Donghyuk asleep over a book, glasses digging into the bridge of his nose. He leaves his notebook on the kitchen table, open to a bloodstained page from two days ago, a note newly written with his last good pen. It’s getting harder to hold onto.

_sorry,_ the note says, the handwriting messier than normal, larger. _sorry, i didn’t mean for this to happen. i have to go. maybe i’ll see you again, someday. be good._

He leaves the door open when he walks, naked, down to the beach. The water laps up over his feet, and he wants to cry with how good it feels on his skin, how much he doesn’t want to go. It’s better this way. He steps forward, and the water swirls around his ankles, up to his calves, his knees. His thighs. He feels something soft and rubbery push against him, a familiar tightening around his ankle. He lets it pull him under.


End file.
